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Journalism of Courage
As they get ready to go to school each day, 8-year-old Rohit Damar and 11-year-old Krishna Damar take off their clothes. Packing them inside clean plastic bags and leaving their slippers on the riverbank, the cousins strip down to their underwear, reach a clearing and jump into the snake-infested Koteshwari river to swim against the current, before walking barefoot to their school in Kachanariya village of Madhya Pradesh’s Dhar district.
There is no school bus to ferry these children to Kachanariya village from their picture-postcard Rasanya village, dominated by the Bhil tribe. Before the cousins jump into the river daily, they embark on a 2-km bicycle ride over broken roads, crossing the undulating lush green hills and steep inclines, a trip that knocks the wind out of the two boys. Though they leave home at 10 am, the journey to school is seemingly never-ending.
Rohit and Krishna are not alone in their struggle. While they swam in the river after school that day, they were carried across by two members of the Kachanariya panchayat because the river was particularly swollen in the morning. As the cousins put on their clothes on the opposite riverbank, they are greeted by their friends Shanu (13), Pavitra (12), Ishwar (11) and Sona (12), all wearing sheepish grins.
Mohan Damar, a 42-year-old gram Kachanariya panchayat member, has been ferrying children across the river for five years now. As he catches his breath and rests his shoulders, throbbing from carrying children and school bags across the river all morning, he says, “Younger children cannot cross the river by themself — they either don’t know how to swim or are too small. They get late waiting for their parents, who start working in the fields quite early. At times, other adults help them cross the river.”
While it takes the children anywhere between 2 minutes and 20 minutes depending on their skill and age, and the strength of the current, the adults make multiple trips to ferry younger children and school bags from one bank to the other.
Exhausted by their swim, the children walk barefoot towards Kachanariya village and enter their school building at 11.30 am. Painted a faded pink, its walls depict paintings of schoolchildren walking through green fields. The school starts at 10.30 am and the students have already missed their first class.
Waiting for the latecomers is their Hindi teacher, 42-year-old Sangeeta Sisodia. “Why are you late? Did the river slow you down?” she asks, patting their heads gently.
She says the group missed school for a week because incessant rain rendered the current in the river too strong to swim across safely.
For over 40 years, schoolchildren from the sleepy Bhil hamlets of Gularipada, Rajghata, Bankiyapada, Implipada, Deogarh and Rasanya have been fighting a losing battle against the Koteshwari river. Koteshwari runs along a 16-km course originating from Koteswar Mahadev Mandir, crossing the Sardarpur subdivision, where the school is located, before flowing into the Mahi river in south-west Madhya Pradesh.
During each election, the tribal community pins its hope on a bridge across the river — a promise made unfailingly by politicians from both the BJP and the Congress. Their hopes are dashed after each election, when the promised construction fails to start.
Congress MLA from Sadarpur Assembly constituency Pratap Grewal blamed the BJP government for the delay. “I sent an estimate of Rs 1.24 crore for the construction of the bridge recently to the government and even got a survey done. The current BJP government is not working on this project. Its claims on development for tribals are mere eyewash. The people here have been demanding this bridge for decades now.”
However, former BJP MLA Vel Singh Bhuria said the BJP is focussing its attention on developing infrastructure in tribal schools. He said, “This bridge is the biggest issue for the tribal community here. I had made an estimate of Rs 2 crore for the bridge but it took me time to implement the project. It takes at least two years to understand one’s job as a legislator and by that time, elections are round the corner once again. I spent several thousand crores on projects when I was the area MLA. This is the last area where development has not reached. I promise you the bridge will be made … after the elections this year.”
The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh has been making a push towards setting up education infrastructure in the election year. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had in July announced that his government would set up 9,000 ‘CM Rise’ schools equipped with smart classes, through which teachers from Delhi and Mumbai will teach students. During his visit to Shahdol in July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that over 400 Eklavya Model Residential Schools, which provide residential schooling for tribal children, were running and that 24,000 such students were getting education in the state.
As political parties bicker, the delay in constructing the bridge has had serious consequences. Nearly 40 children from these villages study in the school at present. Every year, 12 of them drop out due to long periods of absenteeism during monsoon. The dropouts, a majority of them from classes 6-8, join their parents, who work as labourers in Gujarat and Bhopal. The children are usually employed to put protective covers on guavas for Rs 400 per day in Gujarat and other nearby places.
According to the 2011 district Census, 639 persons in these six villages were illiterate, of which 63 per cent were women, and 506 people unemployed, of which women account for 56 per cent. Most people here were employed as daily-wage workers (40 per cent), followed by agricultural labourers (31 per cent).
All thanks to the need to swim to school and the resulting absenteeism, the school authorities said at least 15 children from classes 1-8 fail each year due to a dip in learning levels in mathematics and science.
Sushila Sekwariya, a 38-year-old social science teacher and class teacher for grade 8, said, “Some students who cross the river live in villages 5 km away. They lag behind in school and don’t understand basic concepts like the meanings of ‘capital’, ‘state’ or ‘institution’. They can’t even memorise properly. I need to bifurcate the course material and concentrate on the basics. It’s like teaching two classes in the same room. Over the past 5 years, 23 students from my class have dropped out.” There are about 40 students in class 8 on an average.
Though Krishna is three years older than his cousin Rohit, he is a year behind him in school. However, this does not deter the older boy from taking diligent notes, as his class teacher peers over his shoulder. “I like Hindi. I can understand it easily,” he said.
Though the children attend the same classes, those who cross the river daily are stuck on basics, while the others have advanced, say their teachers. Ishwar and Rohit, both in class 7, struggle with basic mathematical concepts.
Their class teacher Urvashi Chauhan (30), who teaches mathematics, said, “They struggle with basic maths. Primary students can’t do additions and subtractions. Those in my class can’t do three-digit divisions.”
“My father doesn’t have a smartphone. Some neighbours have a smartphone and we can watch English classes on it. Since I don’t get time, we just watch reels on Instagram,” Ishwar said.
On the other hand, Rohit has limited access to a smartphone but uses that time to play games on the phone. “My father has studied till class 10. He teaches me at home when I cannot go to school for months,” he said.
The Hindi-medium school, which began as a primary school in 1981, became a secondary school in 2002. It operates out of four buildings and has two smart classes equipped with an LED television and benches. The rest of the classes do not have benches, the school doesn’t have uniforms and most children carry their books in rucksacks. The school, which has classes till grade 8, has been trying to get higher classes.
Headmaster Bharat Lal Rathore said he has set up his office at the entrance of the school. Due to lack of space, the 59-year-old vacated his office in the admin block. A building meant to house the panchayat office too was cleared to house primary schoolchildren. “Most children, mostly girls, stop studying after class 8. The nearest high school is 6-10 km away from their villages. After swimming to school for years, they cannot continue the struggle for education,” he said.
Rathore drives a grey van, offering rides to children from far off villages, and routinely undertakes operations with the local police at Sardarpur labour chowk to ensure his students don’t work in guava orchards. With just a year left for his retirement, the lack of a bridge frustrates him. “The children have to cross this river daily. It is very dangerous but there is no alternate route. Many politicians have tried to start the bridge project, but in vain. For four months during monsoon, many children are unable to attend school. The river is already infested with snakes. When Mahi dam opens, even crocodiles come to the river. At times, these children have nearly drowned. Still, they don’t listen and continue to cross the river because they want to get educated,” Rathore said.
The children, including Rohit and Krishna, swam to cross the river after school that day. Twelve-year-old Arjun Damar, who learnt swimming around three years ago, can make multiple trips from one bank to the other without gasping for breath. “I have seen snakes in the river. They don’t do anything. I am not scared of swimming. My parents taught me how to swim,” he said, as he got ready to swim in the river after school.
Their home, Rasanya village, has transformed slowly, with mud and brick houses giving way to concrete structures under the PM Awas Yojana. Even electricity and water connections have found their way into this village. However, the number of children from the village who have dropped out of school since the 1980s remains a cause for concern.
Fifteen-year-old Shivani, who dropped out after class 8, spends her time working in soyabean, cotton and rice fields across the state. “I wanted to study but my parents said it was not safe for me to cross the river anymore. I work with my family now,” she said, pumping water out of a hand pump for household chores.
Before children like Shivani, their parents too were forced to give up schooling because of the river. Dhavar Singh, a farmer who dropped out after class 7, has been crossing the river with his daughter Muskan for three years now. She has not attended school for the past few days and mostly remains absent during the monsoon to tend to sheep. “I dropped out of school because I was tired of crossing the river,” he said.
To a question on if the villagers attempted to construct a bridge across the river on their own,
A Sagar Ajnar gram panchayat rojgar sahayak said the villagers had in 2012 tried to get the bridge made on their own by collecting money. “They got an engineer to survey the river and were ready to spend Rs 15 lakh on the bridge. They thought of using large cement pipes as the base but gave up after the engineer said the bridge won’t hold during monsoon. The locals have not made any makeshift arrangements (like a bamboo bridge) because the monsoon makes the river banks unstable.”
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